SIR EDWARD CLARKE ON IRISH TAXATION.
SIR EDWARD CLARKE certainly shows no indis- position to force upon the Unionist Government the duty of accepting a defeat from its antagonists. A few weeks ago he was just too late in effecting a junction with the Venezuelan Government against Lord Salisbury's policy in relation to the boundary question, though it turned out that the Government of the United States was with Lord Salisbury, and took no notice of Sir Edward Clarke's sudden demonstration from the rear. Now he has joined the rather inconsistent party who wish to pro- mote the Union with Ireland by accepting a financial principle which, if it be sound, would break up not only the United Kingdom, but all the minor sections of the United Kingdom, into financial fragments which would have to be taxed at a great variety of different rates. If Sir Edward Clarke is right, justice to Ireland requires not that an Irishman of equal wealth should be taxed just as an Englishman of that same wealth is taxed, but that he should be taxed less if it can be shown that he probably buys proportionately more of the commodities which pay import duties, and pro- portionately fewer of the commodities that pay none, than an Englishman of equal means. For example, if a greater proportional part of his expenditure on intoxi- cating liquor goes in paying the duty on that liquor than goes of the Englishman's on drink of the same description, he is under a grievance, and has a right to demand either that that duty shall be reduced or that it shall be made up to him in some other way. Now here is a prin- ciple which, if it is to be rigidly applied, goes to the very bottom of any kind of national unity. Of course, it is perfectly reasonable to ask that there shall be no attempt to throw a much larger taxation on commodities which only one part of the Kingdom is in the habit of con- suming than on commodities which different parts of the Kingdom are in the habit of consuming. It would be very unfair to tax flax heavily, which is manu- factured in Ireland and not in England, or to tax cotton heavily, which is manufactured in England and not in Ireland. It would be very unfair to tax bacon heavily, which Ireland sells to England, or to tax steel heavily, which England sells to Ireland. Some sort of fair con- sideration for the commercial needs and habits of the different parts of the -United Kingdom must be shown in choosing the articles out of which our Revenue is to be raised. That we do not deny for a moment. But when it comes to demanding that in every part of the same Kingdom it shall never be possible to show that one province or county (or perhaps parish ?) spends more in paying Revenue duties than any other province or county (or perhaps parish), the conception of national unity disappears altogether, in a perfect scramble for an impossible equality. If it could be shown that England spent a much larger proportion of her means on the Tobacco-duties,—say, on the cheaper cigars,—than Ireland or Scotland or Wales, which all preferred the tobacco used in pipes, does any human being suppose that a grievance would have been established in England against the other parts of the Kingdom? Such a grievance would be laughed to scorn, and quite rightly. In a large and general way, of course, there must be no financial favouritism to one part of the country rather than any other. But if in relation, especially to that kind of indirect taxation which is not put on necessaries but on cheap luxuries on which every man may economise at his own discretion, you are to demand a perpetual calculation to establish perfect financial equality, the very idea of national unity goes to pieces, and finance is made a ground of local scrambling between different localities of the same country, and scrambling absolutely fatal to a nation's peace.
Our contention is that in finance especially, it is absolutely essential to national unity not to go into microscopic detail, but simply to keep in view the principle of fair-dealing between different parts of the Kingdom. If Ireland has, as is admitted, much less accumulated wealth than Great Britain, then let the United Kingdom do Ireland justice by defraying the cost of any large enterprise, such as the liberal endowment of a. great Catholic University, or the cost of putting the fisheries on a sound basis, which requires accumulated capital such as Ireland does not possess. But this demand that the whole tendency of all our financial pro- cedure since 1817 shall be reversed, and that instead of financial equality we are to go in for the minutest dis- tinctions between the "taxable capacity" of different portions of the United Kingdom as the basis of our financial relations, seems to us a perfectly mad policy, and to tend directly and dangerously to disintegration. Are we to have minute inquiries as to how much a head the people of London and Manchester and Liverpool and Sheffield and Glasgow and Belfast and Dublin and Cork spend on Tea-duties, and how much the poorer counties spend a head on those duties, and a great outcry if it can be shown that any part of the Kingdom spends a larger proportion of its income on them than any other ? If so, all we can say is that the Separatists will have won their game by a financial flank-attack, and that the nation will be blown to pieces by a financial bomb.
It is admitted by both sides,—Lord Farrer has shown it very effectually in his letter to Tuesday's Times,—that at least England gains nothing, but distinctly loses, by the financial arrangements between England and Ireland by which it is asserted that Ireland also loses much. Whatever may be said as to the taxation of Ireland, which the Irish assert to be so excessive, there is no doubt that, so far as the drain on British resources goes, it is considerably more than compensated by our "extravagant expenditure" on Irish administration. The British taxpayer not only loses by the present arrangement, but is apparently losing more and more every year. Can it possibly be the proper way out of such a state of things as this, which it is also admitted that the Irish party have done a great deal to bring about by pressing for more and more help from the British Treasury, is to go back to so unmanageable and disintegrating a principle as a standard of taxation pro- portioned to "taxable capacity,"—and that, too, after we have made such great strides under Mr. Gladstone's own guidance, in the direction of unity by advancing on financial lines which were certainly contemplated and desired at the very time when the will-of-the-wisp of the "taxable capacity" of large areas was first unfortunately set before us ? Sir Edward Clarke is, we hope, as much on the wrong tack now in taking up that cry as he was when he entered the lists for Venezuela just too late for any practical purpose. The policy, for a genuine Unionist at all events, is to apply himself to the task of discouraging extravagant expenditure in Ireland, and so accumulating a good margin for such proposals as Mr. Horace Plunkett's Committee have suggested and are proposing to suggest. When it is asserted that the Irish Home-rulers would soon reduce the expenditure on administration if they once obtained Home-rule, it seems to us that all the probabilities are outraged. The first great economy of all, the abolition of the Viceroyalty, and the putting Ireland directly under the Parliamentary officer responsible for Irish government, has always been opposed by the Irish party. And we may be very certain that any attempt to suppress the needless expenditure which the Irish party have extracted from the successive Govern- ments of the United Kingdom, would raise the very keenest opposition among Irish politicians. Yet that seems to us the most obvious and useful step which Unionist economists could take in reforming Irish finance. But to the Separatists it would be the most unpopular step. We do not believe they are for the most part economists at all. But if they are they are Separatists first and economists afterwards ; and if they ever gained their Home-rule, we feel no doubt that the economies would, on one pretext or another, be postponed till bankruptcy stared Ireland in the face. Sir Edward Clarke is doing a great injury to Ireland by encouraging this foolish cry for going back to the almost forgotten dreams of those who first brought about the Union. Mr. Gladstone had himself done all that a great financier could do to throw that dream into the shade, and to develop that much sounder and more prolific idea which the statesmen of the Union proposed to embody, though only, alas ! at some future date, in our Irish financial legislation. Surely it is not wise, for Unionists at least, to change their whole policy only because later in the century Mr. Gladstone became a convert to doctrines totally inconsistent with his own Irish finance. Let us leave it to the Home-rulers to exaggerate the local inequalities of finance and to break in pieces a unifying policy. Sir Edward Clarke is ranging himself on the wrong side.
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